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Why?

Why do you do it like that? Because it’s always been done that way? Because that’s how “they” do it. Maybe it’s because conventional wisdom says that’s they way to do it. Conventional wisdom seldom leads to breakout success. Unconventional wisdom often does.

Things change! Pretty much everything changes!

Here’s a fun story that shows why we should always be thinking “why.”

It’s Easter morning as a little girl watches her mom preparing the ham to go into the oven. The mom cuts a bit of ham off of each end before placing it it the pan for baking. The little girl asks her mom why she cut some ham from each end and the mother answers, “I’m not really sure why we do that dear, I do it because my mom always did it. Why do you go in the other room and ask Grandma.”

So the little girl skips on into the family room and asks the same question to Grandma. Her answer is surprisingly similar, she says, “well I’m not really sure why, I always did it because that’s the way my mom always did it. Why don’t you go into the other room and ask great-grandma why she did it.”

Off goes the little girl into the living room to ask the same question to her great-grandma. Her great-grandma answers, “well dear, I’m not sure why your grandma or mother cut a piece off of each end of the ham, I did it simply because I never had a pan big enough to put the whole ham in.”

That’s just how it happens when we allow “we’ve always done it that way” to be part of how we do things. Anything!

We’ve always done it that way is the absolute worst reason for doing anything a certain way.

Annual or repeating events are the most dangerous and most likely to become “habit” events. Never do an annual event without re-thinking every part of the event. Why do we do it? What must be better? What must be different? Should we do the event at all?

Relentlessly re-think. Why? Why? Why?

Improvement requires some sort of change, even if it’s only doing the same thing better. We’ve always done it that way is not the way to improve anything.

Even when you’re satisfied that something is “good enough” you must challenge your thinking. The most successful people know that good enough never is. “Good enough” is accepting mediocrity and once you accept mediocrity then excellence becomes out of reach.

Stop thinking we do it this way or we do it that way and start asking why. Why? Why? Why not do it some other way?

Be honest with your answers. If you don’t know why then find out. Accepting what is without determining what could be is just being lazy.